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In calling for a special training day to address worrying pilot errors, United's new program is the latest indicator that pilot training reform is needed. Courtesy United Airlines.

The debate surrounding the Colgan accident in Buffalo strikes at the core of how aviation safety has developed since the dawn of aviation. It also explains why so many are uncomfortable with the regulations that resulted and why it is so important to get beyond the political deadlock caused by Senator Chuck Schumer.

Between the beginning of aviation and the 1990s, aviation safety relied on forensic analysis of accidents and adopting new safety regulations to ensure the chain of events that caused those accidents didn’t happen again. During the 1990s, however, a series of accidents suggested this approach alone was not enough, leading to using big data to spot trends that dilute safety in order to break links in that chain before they conspire to cause an accident.

“That’s what bothers me about the new regulations,” said Carlos Bonilla, a partner in Airline Forecasts. “Congressional action in Colgan’s case appears to be an ill-conceived, bypassing of the nation’s two bodies charged with aviation safety, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).”

In fact, Congress blithely ignored warnings by both agencies the 1500-hour minimum requirement for pilots was the wrong thing to do.

“FAA’s Office of Accident Investigation said there was no relation between hours and accidents,” said Bonilla. “In its assessment of the rule, the FAA testified that simply raising the total number of flight hours required without consideration of the quality and nature of that time was an inappropriate metric. Such a metric is conspicuous by its absence on the NTSB’s Most-Wanted list of desired safety improvements.”

"It's not always about the hours because we see very experienced pilots with tens of thousands of hours making mistakes,'' Former NTSB Chair Deborah Hersman told USA Today. "In fact, in the Colgan accident, those pilots had more than 1,500 hours, but they still made mistakes.''

Kit Darby, an ATP instructor for a major airline, agrees. “The FAA was not in charge,” he said. “Instead, our novice Congress was listening to people who were not very knowledgeable or who had a political agenda. What we have now likely won't work in the long run and the FAA knows it. But it is the law of the land. It seems it will have to fail badly before the larger airlines complain to Congress for a fix. Let’s hope this time it relies on those who really know what is needed. The problem is immediate while the solution is years away…unless Congress changes the law.”

Colgan families pointed to a series of regional crashes between 2000 and 2009 and, to be fair, even the NTSB voiced concerns. Such mistakes prompted NTSB to put pilot and air traffic controller professionalism on its Most Wanted List.

“There have been a disturbing number of individual incidents of noncompliant behavior, intentional misconduct, or lack of commitment to essential tasks,” says NTSB on its Safety Advocacy website. “These occurrences demonstrate an erosion of pilot and air traffic controller professionalism. Recent accidents and incidents have highlighted the hazards to aviation safety associated with departures by pilots and air traffic controllers from standard operating procedures and established best practices.”

Disturbingly, the video features more regional and small package delivery than major carrier accidents, some of which were not cited by Colgan families. Bonilla analyzed the accidents to which Colgan families referred. “[These accidents] cannot be attributed simply to unqualified pilots,” he said. “Two of those accidents were mechanical failures and one was the sheer stupidity of a 7,000-hour pilot and stupidity can’t be regulated. All three captains and at least one first officer in the other accident held ATP (Air Transport Pilot) certification. All of the members of the flight crews had well in excess of the 1,500-hour minimum, sometimes many times so. Remember, the Colgan captain had 3,379 total flight hours and the first officer had 2,244.”

One of the accidents resulted from the crew mistaking a taxiway for a runway. In December, an Alaska Airlines 737 landed on a central taxiway instead of the runway, the fourth time a pilot made such an error at the airport.

So, if pilots in those accidents had more than 1,500 hours; and, as Hersman noted, even pilots with tens of thousands of hours make mistakes, what were the Colgan regulations all about if not about safety?

And, if the regulations did not result in improved safety and better pilot candidates as noted by numerous studies and efforts by industry leaders such as United and JetBlue to improve pilot training, why are they still so important?

“The flight and duty time and 15-hour rule drove up pilot demand by between 8% and 12%,” said InterVistas Executive Vice President William Swelbar, flatly. “That caused a pilot shortage which drove up pilot pay.”

There is a third question that speaks to Flightpath Economics Partner Dan Akins’s suggestion that some unions want to undermine the regional industry. Why is it a single accident on the regional level tars the entire industry and the same does not happen when a major carrier has an accident? Does it even make sense to tar an entire industry?

Industry observers suggest it is because ALPA is driving the narrative in the media which still thinks of pilots as the ultimate arbiter of safety. Unfortunately, media, naive about aviation safety, knows no better and are now unwitting accessories to a movement that has coopted the debate over Colgan and distracted us from addressing real safety issues.

Case in point: In 1994 there were four airline accidents. Two were at a major airlines including one involving a manufacturing flaw. Two were at regionals, one of which resulted from a previously unknown icing condition, its impact on aircraft and the pilots' inability to cope. It has always been curious that the bulk of the media coverage and regulatory response focused solely on the regional industry.

Pilot Shortage Or Not?

“Pilots used Colgan to advance a union agenda about wages and working conditions,” said Bonilla. “Creating a pilot shortage was precisely what union advocates of this rule hoped to achieve. The 1500-hour rule is based not on science or analysis but on advocacy from pilot organizations with a vested interest.”

Colgan families and ALPA point to a 2014 General Accountability Office (GAO) report saying evidence is mixed on the pilot supply issue. "GAO examined whether the future supply of pilots will be sufficient to meet this need had varying conclusions," said Airline Forecast's Carlos Bonilla. "Two studies point to the large number of qualified pilots that exists, but who may be working abroad, in the military, or in another occupation, as evidence that there is adequate supply. However, whether these pilots choose to seek employment with U.S. airlines depends on the extent to which pilot job opportunities arise, and on the wages and benefits airlines offer."

That supports ALPA's contentions the shortage results from pay issues. But no one is arguing that part of the problem is pay. What ALPA ignores is the fact that if you don't solve the disparity in pay to regional airlines by their major-carrier counterparts, as discussed in Part II, then you will never solve the pay issue. ALPA has remained silent on this issue.

ALPA also points to statistics that show hundreds of thousands of pilots with commercial and air transport pilot certification listed on the FAA registry.

“Licensed pilots are a terrible way to measure the potential pool of professional pilots,” said Darby, an airline pilot career consultant. “Both the unions and GAO have made this mistake in the past. Remember there is no screening to get a pilots license other than a Master Card and a student pilot medical exam. ALPA and GAO assume that all private and commercial pilots should want to be airline pilots. It is just not true. Not everyone can meet hiring requirements – education, height/weight, vision, age, flight experience, personality, physiological profile, aptitude, cognitive ability, credit history, driving record, criminal record, medical status, ability to play well with others, leadership, motivation, and many more. It takes proper selection, good training, proper experience, time and money to create a new professional pilot.”

As for bringing U.S. pilots back from employment overseas Darby said this: “There are, at most, several thousand U.S. pilots flying overseas and we need tens of thousands to solve our problem.”

ALPA denies the pilots shortage. "Qualified pilots are available to fly for airlines that offer a defined career pathway along with appropriate pay, benefits, and work-life balance," it said. "For example, GAO estimates that a range of roughly 1,900 to 4,500 pilots will need to be hired annually over the next 10 years. In 2014, the FAA certificated 7,749 new air transport pilots and about 2,400 pilots separate from the military service branches each year. This total of nearly 9,000 additional pilots becoming available annually and who could potentially fly for the airlines is about double the maximum that the GAO estimates will be required."

Akins takes issue, however. "The large number of pilots receiving ATP's in 2014 was a reaction to the new 1,500 rule and is a bubble of pilots needing an ATP to continue occupying commercial seats and meet the requirements," he said. ALPA did not break down its figures so it is unknown whether they include foreign pilots paid to train in the U.S. before returning home to fly for their home carriers. These pilots constitute half of those enrolled in flight schools.

Even FAA is concerned at the reduction in the number of commercial pilot certificates. It attributes it to the fact that between 2011 and 2014 there was a decline of 16,543 commercial pilots to the Colgan regulations requiring first officers to hold the air transport pilots (ATPs) license, according to its 2015-2035 forecast. "Since airline pilots could no longer operate with only a commercial pilot certificate after August 2013 (excluding a limited number of special cases as specified by 2013 FAA Final Rule for Pilot Certification and Qualification Requirements for Air Carrier Operations), we have reduced the rate of increase of our commercial pilot forecast compared to the previous years."

Akins broke down the current pilot corps for Forbes, saying a shadow pool of pilots doesn’t exist. “For our Pilot Supply Barometer we surveyed more than 30 U.S. major and regional airlines and we found over half of carriers are having or expect to have trouble finding enough pilots," he said. "We also survey pilots for our Aviator Inventory and the results show the numbers whittle down pretty fast. For those holding an ATP, those over the mandatory 65 retirement age, already employed and non citizens bring the total down from 150,000 to 13,000. Of these, 50% are not interested in becoming professional pilots. That leaves only 6,500.

“Separate and apart from ATP-rated pilots, the FAA data show there are 108,000 commercial pilots license holders, total,” he continued. “Eighteen percent are not citizens and 28,000 are already flying for compensation,” he said. “That leaves 60,000 not employed as pilots. Only 20% of those are interested in working as a pilot. That leaves 12,000 U.S. citizen commercial ticket holders. While roughly 65% have sufficient time for the job, only between 5% and 10% of those say they would work for wages less than $50,000.”

That, of course, supports contentions the problem is a pay issue but says nothing about how regionals can pay more when their contracts with their major partners pay so little.

“Increasing pay alone does not create any additional pilots,” said Darby. “Money is only part of the solution. It may bring a few wannabe pilots out of the woodwork but will they be the right candidates?”

Massive Retirements Ahead

Boeing’s 2015 Pilot and Technical Outlook forecast indicates between now and 2034, the aviation industry will need 558,000 commercial airline pilots, including 95,000 pilots in North America alone.

Today 54,000 professional pilots are employed by airlines and, by 2030 the majority – 45,000 – will reach mandatory retirement. Study Author and Director of Aviation Industry Relations Kent Lovelace concluded that American, United, Delta and Southwest need 14,000 pilots in the next six years just to replace retiring pilots.

Chillingly, regional carriers employ about 18,000 pilots and are the primary source for major airlines. “Over the next eight years, the largest major carrier retirements will result in a hiring frenzy that will extract regional airline pilots,” said Akins.

These statistics have implications across the entire industry, he added. “One guy I know, was hired by a regional in August 2014, went through training for the right seat, upgraded to the left seat and in spring 2015, was hired by a major carrier.”

Another way to look at that problem is that regional invested tens of thousands of dollars to train that pilot only to watch him walk out the door within eight months.

Some point to the military as the traditional pipeline but the military is facing its own shortage.
Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh, echoing others in military branches, reported recently that the air force is on the verge of a manpower collapse in most mission areas, according to Air Force Times. In a chilling echo of what the airline industry is facing, he said: “We can’t reach in someplace and grab more manpower to fix the problem anymore. We have to figure out different ways of using our people in more efficient ways or we will wear them out. If we lose them, we lose everything.”

ALPA says 2,400 pilots separate from the military annually but doesn't say how many of them want to become airline pilots. Even so, we are in need of tens of thousands of pilots over the next several years.

Even other unions are questioning ALPA’s stance on the pilot shortage. “I have been talking to pilot unions for the past five years,” Akins explained. “Even the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), which represents only 10% of pilots, thinks it is wrong to say it's only a result a pay shortage. IBT compares it to any other unionized labor group. They say there is a shortage of plumbers and know they get their dues from plumbers. Their response is to develop programs to increase the number of plumbers. Why isn’t ALPA developing apprenticeship programs as other unions facing shortages do?”

But the traditional route to the left seat grates on Colgan family Spokesperson Scott Maurer like fingernails on a chalkboard. “The old method with a captain and apprentice sitting in the right seat wasn’t working,” he said. “To fly aircraft safely, you need two pilots with the same training and same background. As the old saying goes – two heads are better than one. I don’t want the cockpit to be a training environment.”

But former NTSB Chair Deborah Hersman favors the establishment of mentoring and professionalism programs as illustrated by her testimony about the new rules resulting from the Colgan accident.

“Without these important opportunities for mentoring and observational learning, which characterize time spent in journeyman pilot positions, it was difficult for a pilot to acquire effective leadership skills to manage a multi-crew airplane,” she told the Senate.

More recently, United, in announcing new training initiatives for its 12,000 mainline pilots said something similar. Safety experts are concerned, with the massive retirements expected at the low-fare and major carriers, we are facing the largest generational shift in history and more needs to be done to assure an effective hand off, according Tom Kern, a consultant on United’s program, quoted in WSJ.

United is the first major carrier to discuss the issue openly. It’s new program calls for an extra training day and was prompted by worrying pilot errors. Interestingly, its program says as much about senior pilots as younger pilots. United wants its junior pilots to be more assertive in calling out possible errors by captains. It also wants improved communications between the two to “bridge the generation gap.”

With decades of experience covering aviation, I am a freelance writer with bylines in the industry's top publications. I authored Time Flies…The History of SkyWest Airlines and blog at Winging It, unconventional wisdom about the aviation industry. In addition to trends in b...